June 20, 2002: I readily admit that I am jumping on the blogging bandwagon a bit late. However this will not be the first time that I have jumped into something late, and then worked hard to catch up. Take sex, for example. Recent surveys indicate that the average American loses their virginity at 16 years old. Do people realize what that means? That means that for every 18-year-old virgin, there is a 14-year-old out there who is sexually active. And then there's me. I did not join the ranks of the "active" until I was 21 (not for lack of trying, though). According to the (highly mutable) laws of statistics, that means there is someone out there who lost their virginity at 11! My knees quake with shame; somehow, I feel personally responsible for taking this poor 11-year-old and thrusting him into Piers Anthony's "adult conspiracy" before his or her time. Perhaps even making him what Freud declared to be "polymorphously perverse," when children become sexually aware before they are emotionally ready.

Then again, our whole society is polymorphously perverse. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy sex as much as the next 31-year-old American male. I am hardly a hardcore Bible-thumper. But the obsession with sexual imagery that our society currently has, can not be healthy. A year ago I was with my family for the Fourth of July holiday in Lake Tahoe. After a long day of bicycling I was relaxing with my sister and my 10-year-old nephew. As I sat there my nephew began singing a popular song with sexually explicit lyrics. I sidled over to my sister and asked her if she knew what he was singing... her reply was "well, you can't protect them forever." True enough, but 10 years should be possible. Now don't get me wrong. My nephew is a wonderful kid, and I love him very much. But he is going to be entering the troublesome teenage years soon, and this period will be difficult enough for him without the huge burden of sexual expectation that society is laying on his shoulders every time he turns on the radio.

After my admission to the club of the "active" at 21, I have been making admirable progress at catching up to my statistically average peers. And so that is the model I hope to replicate with my "blog." (Can't anyone think of a better word? Ah well... at least it's not an acronym.)

So why me, and why now? I have recently ended one very important phase of my life and embarked upon a new adventure. I still do not wholly understand the internal processes that drive me, and I am hoping this tool may assist in that manner. I wish to explore the details of my life, in the context of this society and our world. And, if I happen to take a few travelers along with me, then so much the better. So come along for the ride and let's see where it goes.

I am a 31-year-old American male. That makes me, according to the surveys pushed by marketers and trashy magazines, acquisitive, brash, narrow-minded, and very likely rude. The first section I should turn to in the newspaper ought to be the Sports page.

But then again, I never have done a good job of living up to my statistical expectations.

As I mentioned above, I recently underwent a fairly substantial life change. I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Pasadena for a job change. Looking at that sentence, I realize that that is like saying "The Lakers won the NBA championship by throwing a ball through a hoop over and over again." True, but completely inadequate.

So let me start over. With death.

Three deaths, to be specific. The three refer to both of my maternal grandparents and my paternal grandmother. They all died recently, all within a year of each other. And while none of these deaths were unexpected- they were all in their mid-eighties and frail- they affected me more than I thought they would. I will begin with my Grandfather.

Grandaddy was truly the patriarch of my family. He hosted momentous family gatherings when I was a child, drawing us together in ways that are not possible nowadays. Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house was an epic event. Easter even more so. Every year he would decorate and hide dozens of eggs, and then draw out a map of the backyard on graph paper with the locations of all the eggs marked with "x"es. As we would hunt the treasures, he would be constantly in motion, checking off eggs as they were found, making sure nothing was left behind. If a younger child was having trouble finding eggs, he would offer gentle hints towards one that was still undiscovered. He was happy doing this, alive, smiling, vibrant.

Some of my best memories of childhood were at his side. He was a larger-than-life figure. He served in World War Two as a merchant mariner, plying the Atlantic sealanes bringing supplies to the troops in France. And yet after the War he was denied veterans' status for fifty years, something which he was always bitter over. I have his service papers mounted in a picture frame and hanging in my bedroom as a tribute to the man.

The neighbors called him "the Super" because of his supervisory attitude. He was a natural leader with a high charisma. During the summer I would spend a week or two with my grandparents and, attitudes being what they were, I would wind up spending most of my time with him. I remember sitting at the little kitchen table in their house in the morning, listening to the percolator mutter to itself as my Grandmother bustled about preparing Scrapple and eggs for us(more on her later). Then we would spend the day together. We would wander down by the canal looking for fossils the earthmoving equipment may have turned up. I would help him with the gardening. He would explain to me the secrets of lawn-mower maintenance. Hw was always a practical person, working with his hands his entire life, first building ships, then running their engines, then, building fire engines, then (life change here) working for the county gardening division, finally being in charge of all public works for all of Contra Costa County. But he always enjoyed getting his hands dirty, building, growing, fixing, creating.

He had lived something of a wild life, by current standards. He smoked constantly, ate red meat regularly, and drank often enough so that he would never be invited to a Tee-Totalers' convention. He confided in me when he was eighty-two that "I never planned on getting this old. I was going to live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse. Michael, never let yourself get old. When you do, everything hurts."

He did, eventually, pass away. His aging heart finally gave out on him one spring day, a few weeks before his eighty-sixth birthday. I could not have scripted a better death for him. He was out in the backyard of the house he had spent fifty years building and maintaining, performing maintenance on his riding lawn mower. His tools were arranged around him, his hands were covered in motor grease. He had a massive heart attack and, according to the doctor, it was instant and painless- a "good" death. I sincerely believe he would have chosen to die in exactly that way.

Of course, the family converged on my grandmother, offering support and love. She had always been a rock, the emotional core of my family, offering support, an ear and a shoulder, and now we returned this support when it was needed most. She was very strong without being stoic, and nobody was surprised. She asked me to perform the eulogy at the funeral. This surprised me a bit; I was always something of a "black sheep" of the family, the runt of the hierarchial litter. At least, that's the way I had always thought about myself. But she asked, and I came through. I spent 24 hours straight preparing and practicing that eulogy. I was filled with trepadation during the funeral, above and beyond the grief I was feeling for my grandfather. But a strange thing happened when I walked up to the podium, wrinkled and damp yellow note paper in hand. All the anxiety fell away; I was perfectly calm and clear-headed. I think that eulogy was the best public-speaking experience I have ever had, and this being after ten years of speech-and-debate clubs, drama clubs, theatrical events, and boardroom meetings. I think he was with me.

My grandmother soldiered on for most of a year further. We supported her, spent time with her. Between my parents, my sisters, and my cousins, we were able to have someone with her for most of the time. We would take 12-hour shifts, and we did not mind. Because we loved her. She was the caring core of the family. She was also the smart one. In a more enlightened age she could have been a doctor; instead, she was a nurse, and a good one at that. She cared for us children as only a grandmother could.

As the months wore on, we could tell that she was getting weaker. I do believe that, past a certain age, continuing to live is an act of pure will. The spirit, the animus of the soul motivates the aging heart to keep beating, the withered lungs to continue drawing in air, and if that spirit flags the body will soon follow. I perceived that my grandmother was staying alive not for her own sake but for the sake of the family. On of her overarching principles was that she never wanted to be a burden on anyone. So to avoid her feeling shame and guilt for us helping take care of her, we acted as if it were a privilege to do so. After a few months I realized that it really was a privilege. I got to know my grandmother better in those few months than I had in the near-thirty years previous.

Her heart had been weakening for years, and one day she had to go to the hospital and have a pacemaker implanted. At that point her children (my mother and my aunt) decided that we, the family, could not adequately care for her anymore. They began looking for a care facility. This was, of course, the last thing my fiercely independent grandmother wanted. But it was all we could do for her. On a Monday, my mom moved her into the care facility. On Friday morning, she slipped into a coma. She had lost her will.

I got the call at 11 AM to go to the hospital emergency room. She was in a private room in the back of the ward, hooked up to the machinery of life. The family took turns coming in and out of the room, talking to the unresponsive woman. Then back out to the waiting room to console each other.

The doctor came out, pulled my mother aside, and consulted with her. She came back to us, sat down heavily. "Well, the doctor says it'll be just a few hours." My father, a wonderful man but somewhat clueless, asked "Just a couple of hours until they admit her?" I looked at him and said sharply, "No, Dad, just a couple of hours." Perhaps too sharply. I regretted the tone of my voice almost immediately.

So then the vigil commenced. Waiting room, emergency room. Back and forth. Finally the nurse waved us over frantically. "Her vital signs are dropping. This is it." we all went back into the room. I went up to my grandmothers' side, took her limp hand, spoke to her soothingly. "Everyone is here grandma, it's all right. We all love you, grandma. Everyone is right here." We were praying, crying. The other people in the room were clustered around the foot of the bed, as if they were afraid to get too close, they might catch something. I saw on the monitor... her signs were dropping. And then a funny thing happened. Her signs perked up for a minute; pulse increased, respiration as well. She opened her eyes and looked around. Her mouth moved a bit, though no words came out. Then her eyes stopped moving, they became unfocused, and slowly closed. The signs dropped again. Two minutes later, it was over.

After about a minute of shock I wandered in a daze out of the private room into the general emergency ward. I went looking for a doctor to inform him. I found a large number of medical personnel crowded around a bank of monitors. I found the doctor, tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and saw me. "It's over," I told him. "We know," was his reply. Puzzled, I looked past him at the bank of monitors... every one of them showed a flat green line on a black backdrop. They were my grandmothers' vitals. They had "tuned in" the monitors to the machines hooked up to my grandma and were watching like spectators at a ballgame as she slid off into the abyss. I was too dazed to muster more than a vague anger.

I performed the eulogy at her funeral too.


The third was my Oma, my father’s mother. A native of Holland, she had never fully integrated into American lifestyle after immigrating in the 1950’s. As far as I was concerned, however, that was just fine. Going to my Oma and Opa’s house as a child was like slipping into an alternate dimension. The sounds were different, the smells were different. Even the sandwiches were different. I had no idea pumpernickel and rye were commonly available to the general public until my teen years.

My Opa died in 1983, but it was a distant death that never really impacted on me. On the Saturday before Easter my two sisters and I woke up to find my parents absent. While watching the obligatory cartoons we received a call from them. My oldest sister handed the phone to me and my mother told me that my Opa had “passed.” That was it. Cancer of the hip, I was told it was. At the funeral I was not allowed to approach the casket. All I could see was the tip of his nose poking up above the rim.

But now my Oma was getting ready to conduct her own “passing.” She had been slipping away from us for years, her brain ravaged by Alzheimer’s. Fiercely independent for most of her life, she had for the past decade been moved from facility to facility, each successive place providing a more intensive level of care. We cared for her, we did. Primarily my father, though. He would go visit her after work several times a week, never letting it affect him. Over the years she devolved from occasional memory lapses to frequent disorientation to a complete separation from reality. When she began confusing me with her late husband, it was disappointing but not entirely surprising- photos of the two of us at eighteen, placed next to each other, are virtually indistinguishable except for the fact that one is color, the other, black and white. But when she went from English back to Dutch and finally into some incomprehensible jumble of both, it became obvious that the end was near.

The call finally came on a Friday evening. It was all too familiar… she had lost consciousness, vital signs were dropping, better get here soon. The death vigil lasted three hours, during which time she was moving in reverse. Higher functions had ceased, but large motor activity continued. Then those became less controlled, more rhythmic. They dropped off and the autonomous functions continued, struggled, dropped off. Then, an odd thing- she opened her eyes. Looking around, she tried to say something. Lips moved but no words came out. Then, the eyes darkened, the lids slowly drooped.

It was almost taken for granted that I would perform the eulogy again. This was a skill which I did not care to develop any further.

I did say three deaths, but there is a fourth I really should include. My dog Wolfie had been my constant companion for most of my formative years. From the age of ten on, he was by my side. I think I logged more hours with him than I have with most of the people I consider my friends. We would head off into the local neighborhoods and parks, sometimes for half a day at a time. He loved splashing through the creeks near my childhood home. My mother always warned me to keep him on the leash – “He’s a big dog, he could hurt someone.” But I knew better. I knew that the fact that he was a big dog (and he was large, 120 pounds) meant he was less likely to lash out. He was a very secure and confident dog, and I let him off the leash every chance I could.

Halfway through his sixteenth year, he suffered what I later realized must have been a stroke. His normal, bouncy, joyous self was replaced with someone who was sluggish and unresponsive. He was living with my parents, and they called me over to see if I could do anything for him. I was able to coax him into eating again (the first time in three days), and after two days of TLC he had become fractionally more active, but I could tell he would never make a full recovery. Walking was difficult, and his two left paws dragged on the ground when he tried to limp about.

We had a difficult decision to make. I could not care for him in the long-term; my apartment complex did not allow dogs. I was also frequently away on business trips, and would not be able to care for him as often as he would require. My parents, for their part, were unwilling to expend the effort to care for him in his weakened state (which would have been significant, to their credit). So we finally reached the painful decision to put him down. I called to him, and with a supreme effort worthy of Sisyphus he struggled to his feet and stumbled over to me. I hooked up the leash to him and took him for one last, slow walk around the neighborhood. He seemed pensive, sniffing the air, aware that this would be his last walk. Finally we got to my parents’ SUV and I gently loaded him in the back. Climbing in, my father announced “I’m just planning on dropping him off; if you want to stay you had better bring your own car.” This made me furious. Here is a creature who has loved you unconditionally for sixteen years and he was ready to simply drop him off, like an old couch at the dump? Furthermore, I was not going to let Wolfie make this last car trip without me by his side. I told my father that if he was not going to stay, then I would walk back to their house.

We got to the vet and I was mildly surprised that all the arrangements had already been made. Four burly vets met us in the parking lot with a stretcher and a muzzle. They affixed the muzzle to Wolfie. if they only knew, I thought, they wouldn’t bother with the muzzle. Then they placed him on the stretcher and carried him inside. My mother and I followed. The vet asked “will you two be accompanying him inside?” To which my mother promptly offered “only him,” and practically pushed me into the examination room.

The room was small, sterile, and overly bright. The table was too small for Wolfie, so they laid him on the floor. The vet sat cross-legged next to him with a gigantic syringe of a pink, viscous fluid. I knelt next to Wolfie’s head, stroking him and talking to him soothingly. The vet explained that this was a powerful anesthetic and he would feel no pain, would just fall asleep. He inserted the tube and I asked if I could remove the muzzle; the vet relented and I unstrapped it.

I held Wolfie’s head up so I could look in his eyes. They were alert and wise, yet pained. I stroked his head and muzzle, assuring him that he was all right, everything wold be all right. The vet slowly depressed the plunger on the syringe.

Now here’s the odd thing. I suppose, all things considered, that it is not too surprising. But the thing is, what I had seen in the eyes of both of my grandmothers as they lay dying, I saw once again in the eyes of my dog as the anesthetic flowed through his veins. The same darkness flowed into the pupils and as his eyes lost their focus on mine they seemed to refocus on something else infinitely far behind me.

It was over. I realized I was holding the full weight of Wolfie’s head in my hands. His eyes, though still open, were glazed. I closed them. The vet offered to leave me alone with him for as long as I needed, and I accepted his offer. Did I cry? Of course I cried. I would have been a monster not to. But I only cried for a little while.

After a little while, I stepped out of the room and asked the vet if I could borrow a ziplock baggie and a pair of scissors. Using these, I snipped off a lock of his fur, placed it in the bag, and put the bag in my pocket. That bag remains in the bottom of my nightstand drawer to this day.


So it seems this is the end of my first attempt at blogging. What do you think? Amateurish? Maybe, but there’s plenty of potential here. And it cant be too bad, if you have bothered reading all the way down here. So thank you for traveling with me this far down the road of self-discovery. And I invite you to come along with me as we continue.